The latest episode of “Saturday Night Live” happens to have aired the night before the 95th Academy Awards, and that gave the show the perfect excuse for a cold open filled with celebrity impressions.
This time, the sketch parodied E!’s Oscars red carpet coverage, which included some good and some, uh, needs-work impressions. But per usual, Bowen Yang proved he can save even the weakest sketches when he showed up as serial-liar congressman George Santos — pretending to be Tom Cruise.
It kicked off with Heidi Gardner and Marcello Hernandez portraying E!’s red carpet talent, explaining that this year’s ceremony has updated security due to The Slap. “Last year the Oscars had the slap, which was awesome, I mean bad, really bad,” Gardner said, before Hernandez revealed that Mike Tyson had been hired to oversee security.
Tyson was played by Kenan Thompson, and he did give us a very funny line when speaking to Hernandez, who played Mario Lopez, he called him “Mario Luigi.”
Mario luigi. Yes this year all the nominees have been given tazers, all seat fillers has been given guns, and Jimmy Kimmel has been given a flamethrower.
Next the hosts briefly discussed the frequent criticism that the Oscars aren’t very diverse. “Remember, Oscar turns 95 this year,” they said, explaining that Oscars is way less racist than real life grandparents that age.
Next they discussed Oscars betting odds — the funniest moment here is when they gave the odds that “someone who made 20 million dollars last year will say the phrase ‘we are all Ukraine’.”
Then after a few more jokes came Yang. He was of course introduced as Tom Cruise but when he came out he was dressed as the congressman. “I’m definitely Thomas Q Cruise,” Yang’s Santos insisted.
“Now if you’ll excuse me I have to be everyone everywhere all at once,” Yang said as he left the sketch.
See clips from the sketch at the top of the page, and below.
